I don’t think any “ugliest building” list is credible if it doesn’t include this or this or this or this.
Special mention: WTF?
ETA: I think the Harold Washington Library isn’t ugly. I can’t say I’m taken with it, but very far from offended.
A vote for Government Service Center in Boston. Brutalist like City Hall and not even finished. Not to mention stuck in City Hall Plaza, best described in this Bill Wasik quote: "“It is as if the space were calibrated to render futile any gathering, large or small, attempted anywhere on its arid expanse. All the nearby buildings seem to be facing away, making the plaza’s 11 acres of concrete and brick feel like the world’s largest back alley. … [It is] so devoid of benches, greenery, and other signposts of human hospitality that even on the loveliest fall weekend, when the Common and Esplanade and other public spaces teem with Bostonians at leisure, the plaza stands utterly empty save for the occasional skateboarder…”
Well, it’s the National Fisheries Development Board building in Hyderabad, India, so the shape seems appropriate.
Actually, I think that one’s really cool! I like when they make building shaped like animals or giant objects, like Lucy the Elephant in Margate NJ. In the late 1800s there was an even larger elephant at Coney Island that was a 31 room hotel. Sadly it later burned down.
I’m with you about whimsically shaped buildings being fun. That’s why the fish merited “WTF” status rather than the more serious “fugly” rating. I do think it passes some too-“whimisical” threshold that is difficult to define, but I’m pretty sure it crossed. Obviously that rating is pretty personal, and if you don’t share it, I understand.
What do you think of my third link above (this one), a building inspired by an elephant? I’m so not giving that one a pass, whimsically or otherwise, but I’m curious if an animal-building admirer like yourself thinks otherwise.
That’s here in Bangkok, and it looks neat. It’s off Phahonyothin Road in northern Bangkok. I don’t really get over that way much anymore, but I used to pass it all the time. I know a Brit who lives in it.
Should the department of sanitation’s building be shaped like a toilet, or feces? Choose well.
The elephant face is kinda cool, but the rest of the building is pretty blah. It looks like it’s just a giant sheet of pegboard.
Definitely a toilet. Bonus points if they can actually include a giant lid that lifts up and down. 
I agree with Boston City Hall needing to be on this list. As nobody’s linked to it, here it is.
The Edward Sullivan Courthouse and jail are eyesores on a generally awesome skyline in Cambridge. Who thought it was a good idea to build a high-rise jail?
My campus has some ugly ass buildings, but Burdine Hall wins. Having spent plenty of time inside, the picture looks a lot better and the interior is just as hideous.
Back to Boston. When I was in grad school I spend hours in this monstrosity.
As a kid, I visited the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham. Even though I couldn’t have been more than 10, I remember how alien and cold - and gripped with fear - the landscape left me. Add in some late 70s garbage and graffiti, and this is precisely what the world would look like after nuclear armageddon. They’ve turned it into this, which isn’t much prettier, but it looks a hell of a lot cleaner and safer.
Bucharest’s Palace of Parliament is pretty fug.
But the all-time greatest curator of ugly buildings? Photographer Frederic Chaubin. I can’t imagine the nightmares he endured after taking these pictures.
The picnic basket building looks oddly cute, to my eye. Perhaps that is because it is surrounded by pristine gardens with sumptuous flower beds. But the list is far from complete, as it has missed out this outstanding eyesore, rising above the slums of Mumbai. The architects seems to the have gone for the “under construction” look… to what end, they alone know.
Is the New Checz National Library being built? Is there enough expectorant available for construction now that their economy is in the spitoon?
Those are only marginally worse than the Clinton Library, which looks like a trailer home that is about to fall into a river.
I have to say, if you want ugly, you have to visit Tyson’s Corner VA, home of the NADA building (side view) and the “Toilet Bowl Building.” There is also the AT&T building right down the road in Oakton, but I can’t find a photo as they’ve wisely surrounded it with trees.
